The week started off great with a bargain purchase last weekend with a bucketful of these gorgeous, red, juicy strawberries for only $8. Gotta love farmers markets. My brain was whirling in overdrive with things that I wanted to make with these fabulous looking and tasting strawberries. Jams, sauces, slices and pastries! Lets just say a few got eaten by a certain little person (and two big people) before I even got a chance to start cutting them up for my planned recipes.

Straight from the bucket by the handful!

A few things I ended up making with them was a low sugar chia strawberry jam sweetened with honey. I found the recipe from Angela @ Oh She Glows. Upon making the jam I knew I had to make the strawberry oat squares (using oats) to go with it! Delicious! The pinnacle recipe I think which didn't feature the strawberries so much but they made a nice addition to was the drop dead delicious custard eclairs that I made for hubby as a special treat. He indulged in these over the early part of the week stating they needed to be eaten fresh thus having to eat more than his fair share in the period of a few days!

Make sure you pop over to instagram and follow me to see what other mischief I get up to during the week!

Things kinda went down hill by Tuesday with our little boy has been quite sick with a flu virus, temperatures and teething all rolled into one miserable event.We have been blessed to have had quite good health over the winter season and during the first year of J.D's life however this was the first serious case of illness that I have had to deal with and I was pretty stressed out to say the least. Walking the halls at 4am trying to settle a miserable, delirious baby with a seriously high temp didn't rate on my favourite things to do. Numerous trips to the doctor, antibiotics, many doses of nurofen and panodal later we seem to have turned a corner today and have improved a bit. No more 4am walking the halls anyway! It has been a VERY VERY long week!

Earlier in the week before sickness struck I managed to sit down at my sewing machine and whip up my first pair of little boys shirts for J.D. I got the pattern from here. It was such an easy pattern to make, I think I managed to whip them up in under an hour. The pride and sense of satisfaction of making them was pretty special and they look pretty darn cute on the little fella. I wasn't really thinking when I bought this material... white for a boy = DIRTY! I now have another four pairs cut out and ready to sew in different types of material. I bought two different coloured denims and a army print - to hide the dirt!

Other things that have been happening around the house has been this creation below! You look at it and go, "what is that?"... no its not some kind of pole sculpture... its going to be a garden arbour. You see that big ugly silver box right there? We are trying to cover it up and soften it a little. We are using recycled hardwood timber from a previous patio that was attached to the back of the house, that we knocked down before putting our deck up. So this arbour will cost us very little to make! I call it frugal building.

I'm thinking of creating something like this arbour below and possibly training a rambling rose over it. I had initial thoughts of wisteria but roses always win out for me! We have plans to flank the arbour either side with Camila's and create another rustic recycled brick path in the front of it leading out to a fire pit in front of the arbour. Will keep you updated on the progress of this project.

We've been planting up The Patch with spring and summer vegetables over the last few weeks. Things like tomatoes, spring onions, beans, carrots, beetroot and corn have gone in recently. This garden keeps us busy most afternoons with a bit of weeding and watering required and produce ready to be picked. Our asparagus has been sending up tender shoots profusely over the past few weeks and we have been enjoying these for breakfast on the weekends grilled with a little olive oil alongside our freshly laid eggs from the chooks!

I also have bucketfuls of lemons and valencia oranges from the orchard to deal with. I have plans to make some lemon curd with the lemons and maybe experimenting with making some low sugar marmalade using the same technique as the chia strawberry jam I made earlier this week. Will keep you posted on that one.

I am hoping the weekend and the week to come will be a little less full on with sick babies and hopefully we can make some adventures out of the house and enjoy this lovely sunshine!